


If I Only Could

by indevan



Series: Running Up That Hill [4]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Birthday, Families of Choice, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 08:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13737030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Sometimes, though, life was really good.  The three of them were a family, which was a feeling Mai hadn’t had in a long time





	If I Only Could

**Author's Note:**

> i finally categorized these into a series and anyone coming in, please refer to the notes of the first fic to see about my headcanon about future mai that i will never let go no matter what canon or other people say lmao

One of the things Mai liked best about living in a peaceful world was the music.  Most bands and groups simply gave up when the androids attacked.  There were protest songs, songs about revolution, but soon there weren’t really many radio stations left to play them.  It got worse with Black.  There were so few people at that point and those that were left were part of the resistance; they were fighting for their lives.

Now, there was all of this music that they could listen to and discover.  Goten helped as much as he could but there were also bands that the three of them found out about together.  There were shows they could go downtown to see or see perform at the club where Goten tended bar.  It was exciting, really.

At work in the coffee shop, there was a little chord that someone could plug their phone into and play music overhead.  She mostly listened to what her co-workers played since she had no music on a phone that only made and received calls.  Sometimes, though, she would make a suggestion and get an approving nod.  That was good.  It meant that they were fitting in.  She couldn’t believe how hard that part was--adjusting to being normal.  It wasn’t just the PTSD--the nightmares.  It was knowing that the world she and Trunks grew up in wasn’t at all normal and so they had to try their best.  Goten helped where he could, but while his life had been normal until his possessed brother destroyed the world, his wounds were also the freshest.

They made a strange trio.

Sometimes, though, life was really good.  The three of them were a family, which was a feeling Mai hadn’t had in a long time.  Even her fellow resistance fighters weren’t really a family.  Trunks was her family before they were romantic and he was far more now that they weren’t.  Coming out to himself and everyone seemed to do well for him.  Moreso now that he and Goten were together.  Mai didn’t even feel left out--most of the time.  Feeling like a third wheel was inevitable but they included her so often in dinners out or in movie nights that she didn’t feel it too, too often.

The door to the coffee shop opened, sending in a gust of wind.  A few dead leaves skittered over the ground and Mai shivered.  She was used to the cold.  Hiding out in bunkers and old, stone apartment buildings that had long lost heat and electricity would do that.  Despite that, the coffee shop was kept so warm that she could almost forget it was autumn until a customer came in, studding her with goosebumps and reminding her what time of year it was.

Goten came in, grinning broadly.  He waved at her energetically as if they were in a crowded room and not a nearly empty coffee house in the middle of the day.  His exuberance, as usual, was infectious and she found herself laughing at his antics.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. “You know today is Trunks’s day off, right?”

He came up to the counter leaned his elbows on it.  They were in a lull time in the middle of the afternoon so there were no customers and so no reason for the manager to come out and chastise Goten (again) for distracting her or Trunks while they were working.

“I know,” he said.  He raised his thick eyebrows and smiled that devastating smile of his at her. “I came for you.”

Despite the fact that he was her best friend’s boyfriend, she blushed.  It was the heat in the shop, she told herself, and the fact that Goten’s smile was one of the most powerful weapons in any universe.

“What do you mean?”

He straightened up and fiddled with the zipper of his bomber jacket.  Mai knew he had found it in a charity shop near their apartment building.  It was orange and black and he went wild for it, saying his father had had one just like it.

“You know how it’s Trunks’s birthday next week?”

“It is?”

Goten faltered. “Uh--yeah.  Didn’t you know?”

She hadn’t.  There wasn’t really time to celebrate when you were fighting for your life.

“No.  It never came up.”

“Oh, right.  I mean, I figure the Trunks from my world and this Trunks have the same birthday so I asked him and he said that they did.”

That made sense.

“So I want to do something for him and I came to enlist your help.”

Mai couldn’t help but smile.

“Sure thing.”

She hadn’t celebrated her birthday since she was small.  After her mothers died, Uncle Shu and Uncle Pilaf tried to celebrate, but it was never quite the same.  No one could bake a cake like her mama and...no, it could never be the same.

“Cool!  Great!  Uh, I’ll give you details when I think of any,” he said. “We have to celebrate our boy.”

Mai didn’t bother to say that Trunks wasn’t hers.  He never really was.  And she didn’t mind it--they made better friends than half-hearted lovers and Trunks was infinitely happier since he realized he was gay.

“Do you want something?” she asked rather than address it.

“Sure--yeah.  That’d be great.” There was that smile again.

She didn’t bother asking for his order.  Goten always ordered the same thing when he came in.  She started making the iced latte and he leaned back on the counter to watch her.

“When’s your birthday, by the way?” he asked. “Mine’s the end of February: the twenty-seventh.”

Mai made note of it with a nod of her head.  She poured in milk and popped the lid on.  Giving the latte a swirl, she handed it to him.

“I wasn’t technically born,” she told him. “But my moms wished for me on April third so we always celebrated that as my birthday.”

Goten jammed a straw in the top of the lid and grinned. “I’ll write it down so I don’t forget.  We’ll celebrate it.”

Mai put his order in the register and used her employee numbers to comp it, nodding as she did.

“Right, sure.”

The way he said it reminded her of when she showed up in the dilapidated castle deep in the desert.  Thirteen and terrified and shaking in her mother’s too large coat.  It was her birthday and Uncle Shu and patted her head and said that they would celebrate it.  She shook the memory away.  Now wasn’t the time.

She must have actually shaken herself physically because Goten reached out a hand.  He didn’t take hers, didn’t just grab her, and she was grateful.  Slowly, Mai reached out and placed her hand in his.

“If you ever want to talk about anything, I’m a pretty good listener, okay?” He gave a softer, smaller version of his smile. “I could even teach you fusion, too--it helped Trunks.  Although…”

She knew that, having come home more than once to find them Gotenks in the living room, sitting on the couch.

“Although?”

Goten swung their joined hands together and laughed.

“Both Gomai and Maiten are terrible names.”

She laughed and nodded her agreement.

“Yeah.  They are.”

He gave her hand a squeeze and let go.

“I gotta jet,” he said. “We’ll talk later about...you know.”

He tapped the side of his nose with his free hand like he was a secret agent and Mai had to laugh again.  She nodded back and, instinctively, made a hand gesture back that they used in the resistance.  With another gust of wind, Goten was gone.  She stared down at her hand, not because he held it, but because of the gesture she had made.  To anyone else, it looked like a joke between friends but that had been the signal to fall back so she could trigger a trap for Black.  Mai clenched her hand and exhaled through her mouth.

\--

Having a party with only three people (and two cats) was strange, but Mai found herself liking the planning.  She liked that she and Goten had this secret mission together.  If Trunks suspected anything, he didn’t make any mention of it.  Even on their shifts together, Mai was careful to keep her mouth shut.

She had to say that keeping secrets about birthday plans were far more fun than battle plans and schematics of the sewer system beneath West City.

“What band is this?” she asked.

“Saint Motel,” Goten replied.

He dragged the song to a playlist they were compiling for the party.  It was mostly songs they discovered together from groups that Trunks particularly liked.

“Oh, they sang the song with the--” She played an imaginary keyboard in the air. “I know them.”

Noodles had come up in the midst of their song compiling and Mai reached out to scratch him behind the ears.  He purred and rubbed his head up into her palm.

“I think we’re good.”

Goten saved the playlist and closed his laptop.  He drummed his fingers over the top of it and screwed his mouth to one side.

“I want to make him a cake.  Like, from a mix--I’m no baker.  Not like my mo--” He stopped himself and bared his teeth in a parody of his usual smile.

“Me neither,” she said finally and let the implication hang there.

None of them were better at talking about it.  It was too hard, most of the time.  They had the knowledge, could make assumptions, but that was all.  She and Trunks had shared trauma, shared experiences (to a degree--she knew there was a lot that happened to him before they met) and Goten had shared some of his with Trunks but most of the time it was easier to just not talk about it.

“It should be a chocolate cake,” Goten said suddenly.

Mai nodded too emphatically in agreement. “Definitely.  With lemon curd in it because he’s the one person who likes lemon and chocolate together.”

He laughed. “Definitely.  I think they sell jarred curd at the corner store.”

“They do, I’ve seen it.”

Silence fell between them again and even Noodles seemed to recognize it because he rubbed his chin first against Mai’s hand and then his whole body on Goten’s arm.

“If you ever…” he started and then shook his head. “I’m crap at talking about my own shit but, like I said the other day, I’m a good listener.”

Mai chewed her lip and reached out to scratch Noodles’s chin.  Not one to be left out, Cronos--now referred to as C(h)ronos when Trunks learned that he had spelled the name he wanted wrong on the adoption form--padded over and began winding his way through their legs.

“One of my moms was this amazing cook.  Even if we were in a crappy motel on the run from whatever, she would find a way to make me a birthday cake,” she said finally.

“Same with my mom,” Goten said. “You could put a spatula in her hand and she could bend time and space to make food, it seemed.”

She could understand that.  What her mama was able to do with a hotplate was astounding.  She and her mom were always surprised.

“I was thirteen,” she continued, “When they--when the androids…”

It was hard to talk about.  How one moment they were there and then: fire, burning, screaming.  Her holding her mom’s coat to her chest and screaming for them both.  Hearing nothing in return.  How they shouldn’t have been in the city that day--it was her fault.  Her damn birthday.  They didn’t have sprinkles and her mama insisted they should go to the city for them.  That maybe, while they were there, they could find her a present at a store 18 left standing because a manager was nice to her.

Goten seemed to notice her tense because he scooped Noodles into his arms and grinned broadly.

“So, chocolate and lemon?”

She nodded.

“Right--chocolate and lemon.”

\--

It wasn’t going to be a surprise party in the way she had read in books.  Hiding in the dark and jumping out to scream “Surprise!” seemed to be a recipe for Trunks to power up and run for his sword.  Instead, Goten was taking him out for lunch and, when they returned, he would see the apartment decorated and a cake on the table.

That meant that Mai only had a certain amount of time to put the decorations up.  There weren’t a lot of them.  Yesterday she and Goten had gone to the dollar store to get streamers and cone-shaped party hats.  She put seven purple candles in the cake since Trunks said seven was his lucky number and set it on the table.  Noodles immediately tried to lick at it so she scooped him up.  At the same time, C(h)ronos went for it since the two brothers were incredibly synchronized in their attacks, and she had to lift him up with her foot to get him away from the table.  Finally, the cats seemed to give up and Noodles even let her put a little party hat on him.

Goten had let her know that they were on their way back, but it wasn’t until she heard their voices in the hallway did she turn the music on.

“You ate a bit more today,” she heard Goten say through the door.

“Yeah, I’m trying,” was the reply.

“I hope you still have room, though.”

“Why?”

The door opened, Goten leaning in as he held the knob.  He grinned broadly.  Not sure what else to do, Mai spread her arms out.

“Happy birthday!”

Trunks stepped into the apartment, his eyes wide.  He turned back to Goten who was closing the door and locking it.

“You did this?” He turned to Mai. “You two?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

He stood in shock.

“I can’t...no one has.  Not since…”

Finally, he broke into one of his rare, winning smiles.

“Thank you--both of you.”

Goten came up and looped his arms around his shoulders.

“There’s cake,” he said and pressed a kiss to his jaw. “And presents.”

Mai nodded and gestured towards the cake.  Trunks shrugged out of his coat and dropped it on the couch.  He sat at the table, staring at the cake in disbelief.  Between it, though, he smiled a breathless sort of excited smile and would shake his head in laughter.

Goten put the party hat on him, putting the elastic under his chin, and did the same to himself.  Mai put her own on and Noodles--somehow still wearing his hat--hopped onto her lap.  Goten went to the kitchen to grab the book of matches and struck one.  He lit the candles before helpfully leading them through singing “Happy Birthday.”

“Make a wish,” Mai told him once they were through.

“I don’t know what I could want…” Trunks tapped his chin and then closed his eyes before sucking in a deep breath.  He blew out the candles with one gusty breath and she and Goten burst into applause.

She took the candles out to place on a napkin and Goten got the knife out to cut it into slices.

“You made chocolate,” Trunks said with a smile.

“Not just chocolate,” Mai said. “Look.”

Goten slid the first piece onto a plate and passed it to him.  The moment he saw the strip of yellow between the two layers of chocolate, Trunks started laughing.  It was the most she had heard him laugh in a while and it was a good feeling.  She smiled--this was good.  Reclamation of birthdays.  Goten said they would celebrate hers and maybe it could overwrite the memory of her thirteenth.  That was what they did.  They got on and rebuilt themselves together, the three of them.  Their family.

C(h)ronos came up to sit on Trunks lap and rubbed up on his chest.

“Hey,” he said and scratched the cat under his chin. “Did you help, too?”

The cat’s response was to audibly purr and settle on his lap.

“Thank you,” he said again, “Both of you.  This is…”

He smiled down at his slice of cake.  Goten leaned in and kissed his cheek.

“Of course.  Like I told Mai, you’re our boy.” He rubbed his nose against his neck and smiled.

Trunks turned back to nuzzle against him.  Mai sat there, apart from them, but the feeling of being a third wheel didn’t come.  She was included but in a different way.

“Okay,” Goten said, waving his fork in the air for emphasis. “My birthday’s next so remember that I like strawberry.”

She laughed. “Got it.”

Trunks made an okay-sign with his hand and leaned over to kiss him again.  Watching them, she was reminded of her mothers, but for now it was a nice feeling.  Nostalgia of sitting in roadside diners or in the hotel rooms, watching a small, black and white TV and feeling at home despite the water-stained ceiling or creaking floors above them.  It was a feeling of family.

The music on the playlist they played on and she closed her eyes to listen to it.

**Author's Note:**

> http://vertigoats.tumblr.com


End file.
